Aftermath
by Snafu1000
Summary: Originally posted as 'Blue Blooded'. Detective Jane Rizzoli wasn't thinking about surviving when she shot herself to save her brother. When she does, she finds that the aftermath has affected more than just her.
1. Going Down

_Author's Note: All right, the editing of 'Sins of the Fathers' is refusing to let me move forward until I get this particular piece of head-canon back into place. Originally posted as 'Blue Blooded', its intended purpose and scope has been changed. It'll be a three shot dealing with the end of the Season 1 finale and after: at the scene, at the hospital and once Jane comes home. This way, I've only got one ongoing R&I fic in the queue and I can just write the one-shots as they wander close enough for capture._

_Like my other stuff, no Rizzles, no apologies. There are plenty of good stories covering that ground if that's what you're looking for. This one, along with 'A Rizzoli Childhood' and 'Crossing Lines' can be considered my head-canon for the diverging storyverses of 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' and 'Sins of the Fathers', along with any other stories I write that take place later in the timeline._

* * *

"Shoot him!"

Shattered safety glass scraped and rolled against linoleum and concrete as Detective Bobby Marino dragged Detective Jane Rizzoli through the shot-out front doors of the Boston Police Department's downtown headquarters, left arm locked around her neck and the barrel of his pistol jammed against her temple. As her boots scrabbled and pushed, looking for any traction, Jane could see from the corner of her eye the motionless body of someone lying in a pool of blood near the elevators.

Cop? Bad guy? Fuck..._both_? She didn't know; the world had turned abruptly on its ear when Marino had shot the perp that she'd thought had been holding all four of them hostage. A detective she'd known for years had been running drugs, had killed his partner, had brazenly raided BPD with his gang to steal the evidence that would incriminate him, had shot Frankie.

_Frankie._

She could see Frost, Korsak, Cavanaugh and the rest who had been drawn out of HQ into a manhunt for the killers of an undercover detective, never dreaming that the killers would come to them. Guns were leveled, fear and helpless rage on every face, and she knew that none of them would dare take the shot, because they didn't know...

"Shoot him!" she screamed, trying to get the rest of the words past the terror that was clawing at her chest, her own safety the furthest thing from her mind. Frankie was in the basement, in the morgue, bleeding out internally, because this bastard or one of his goons had shot him point blank, causing major damage even though he'd been wearing a vest. Maura had done what she could, but he needed surgery _now_, and he wasn't getting it because none of the responders were going to go in while Marino was out here with a gun leveled at _her. _

Her little brother was going to die because of her.

"Get your keys!" Bobby shouted in her ear.

"Bobby, please, it's over!" She wanted to kick his ass, wanted to slap the cuffs on him and toss him in a cell where he'd never again see the light of day, but more than either of those right now, she _needed_ to get him to let her go, end this so that Frankie could get help. "It's over!" Couldn't he see that? They'd come up together, she knew he'd seen this same scene played out before from the other end of the gun, seen how it always ended, sooner or later.

"Shut up!" he roared, dragging her toward her car, keeping her body between himself and the guns on the street. "Get your damn keys!"

"Just shoot him!" Her voice rose to a shriek, her eyes finding Korsak. "Vince, forget about me and get in there! Frankie's shot, he needs help -"

"He's probably already dead!" Maybe Marino thought that this would defeat her, get her to focus on her own life, but it was like pouring gas on the fire in her blood, sending up an inferno that seared away everything but a single imperative.

The scream that tore itself from her throat felt as though it had been dragged over broken glass as she kicked back, knocking him off balance. Her hands came up, locking around Marino's and dragging the Glock down until she felt the barrel jammed into her lower abdomen. She forced her finger through the trigger guard on top of Marino's, pushing hard...

The report of the shot filled her world, the flare of pain as the bullet tore through her all but lost in a swell of savage triumph as Marino jerked convulsively with the impact, the force lifting them both up for an instant, then dropping them like a pair of tangled puppets with cut strings.

The pain flared brighter as she hit the pavement, the gun skittering away from their combined grips. She could feel the warm wetness on the front and back of her shirt, feel it spreading, feel the odd sensation of her own blood pulsing from her with each heartbeat. She pushed Bobby's arms away, rolled forward; damned if she was going to die with that bastard still holding her.

_Frankie._

She forced her eyes open, tried to lift her head up to look, to see if they were going to help Frankie, but her head felt so heavy, and it was a fight to keep her eyes open. She was tired...God, she was tired, but Frankie...

She heard it then: her name being screamed, and she knew the voice. It was Maura. Maura was here, and that meant that Frankie had to be okay, because Maura wouldn't have left him otherwise. She wouldn't have left him if he wasn't okay.

Frankie was all right. Jane closed her eyes and let go.


	2. Coming Up

_Author's Note: Sorry for the length of time between updates, but RL has been very insistent on having my attention the last several weeks._

* * *

Pain.

It pulled her out of unfeeling oblivion, clanging along her nerve endings like an alarm clock with no snooze button. It centered somewhere below her ribs, but radiated out to the tips of her fingers and toes, pulsing dully in her temples in time with her heartbeat.

_What happened?_

She couldn't remember, couldn't push past the pain to think, couldn't even summon the energy to open her eyes. And her mouth tasted like a horse had pissed in it. She tried to groan, to swallow against the taste and the dryness, and the pain was joined by the first jolt of fear when she realized that there was something in her mouth blocking her from swallowing. The jolt blossomed into terror when she tried to reach for her mouth and found her hands restrained.

_Hoyt._

The single syllable ricocheted through her hazy consciousness like a stray bullet, the pain taking a sudden and distant second place to the need for escape. She jerked upward against her bonds, a wordless growl all that could escape around the obstruction in her mouth.

_Getawaygetawaygetaway_

Hands trying to push her back down, voices speaking, the words slipping off the panic like water rolling from an umbrella. The questions of how he had escaped from prison, how he had captured her, were buried beneath the terror as she found herself facing weeks of nightmares that she'd fought her way past now brought to hellish reality.

"Jane? My God, what's happening to her? Janie!"

_Ma?_

She hadn't thought that it was possible for her to be more frightened than she already was, but in that instant, her fear doubled, trebled, swelled impossibly, because the son of a bitch had her _mother_, had Angela, was going to use her to get to Jane. Fury joined the fear, flight shifting to fight, and she lunged against both the restraints and the hands, rattling the frame she was secured to, snarls ripping from her throat. She forced her eyes open, but they felt gritty, gluey, the lights of the room too bright to let her make out more than shadows looming over her. Hoyt and another damned apprentice? More than one?

_Killyoukillyouallyoubastardsdontyoutouchher!_

"Hold her and get me two cc's of Nembutal!"

"Damn it! She _bit_ me!"

"Stop it! You're hurting her!"

"Jane! Jane, listen to me!" Maura's voice was low, urgent, but it cut through the din like a hot knife through butter. "Jane, it's not him. It's not Hoyt. You're in a hospital, sweetie, you're safe, and he's still rotting away in his cell. _It's...not...Hoyt._" The last words were measured, intense; Jane could hear any number of emotions in the doctor's voice, but fear was not among them. "Nod if you understand me."

She made herself nod, her mouth working around the obstruction as she screwed her eyes shut and pried them open a few times until her vision cleared, turning her head until her still-bleary vision found the doctor crouched beside the bed. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair hung limp, and her makeup was a mess. Jane could still hear her mother crying.

"You shot yourself, Jane, do you remember?" Maura's voice broke on the words. "Bobby Marino? The attack at headquarters?"

She felt her brow furrowing as she tried to reach past the haze and pain, and the sound of her mother's sobs. Bobby? Bobby Marino was a narcotics detective. She'd worked with him. He -

_Oh, shit._

The door to her memory crashed open, images flooding away the haze. Gunfire and broken glass and blood. Bobby shooting the last of his accomplices, then turning the gun on her as she stood between him and Maura and -

Her mother was crying.

_No._

Frankie staggering in, face pale. Stretched out on one of the tables, face damp with sweat, whimpering as he tried to draw breath. Holding tight to her hand. Coughing up blood. Maura's face, strained and frightened as she fought to save his life.

"_He needs a hospital. He needs surgery. Now!"_

Her mother was crying.

_Frankie._

_No!_

She'd shot herself to stop that bastard Marino, to end the standoff and get Frankie out of there, but it hadn't been enough. Frankie was dead, her little brother was dead, she hadn't saved him, and her mother was crying. She surged up again, the emotion ripping through her now sharper than terror, deeper than rage: a searing pain that utterly overwhelmed the physical discomfort of her injuries and a grief that seemed likely to tear her asunder.

"No!" She tried to scream it, but all that could escape around the tube was the strangled howl of a wounded animal. _Not Frankie, not my little brother, it was supposed to be __**me**__, God, please, please, __**please**__ make it me and not him!_ The hands were again trying to push her back onto the bed, but she barely felt them, jerking violently against the restraints on her wrists without noticing when something on her right gave out with a creaking protest of abused metal.

"Jesus Christ, she's breaking the fucking _bed_! Where's the goddamn Nembutal?"

"Jane! Oh, my God, Jane! Maura, what's happening?"

"Move! Move and let me in there now!" Arms around her, not restraining, just holding on, and Maura's voice in her ear. "Jane, Frankie's alive, he's fine. He's on the floor below this one and your father's with him. He had surgery, and he's going to be fine. He's alive, he's fine." Maura kept repeating the words, over and over, and slowly, their meaning sank in. Her struggles slowed, then ceased, and she turned her head to search Maura's face, seeing the truth behind the words. Maura wasn't lying, because Maura _couldn't_ lie. The relief that flooded her was no less intense than the grief had been but her sob was choked off by the damn tube in her throat.

"You have an endotracheal tube in place," Maura responded to the question she could not utter. "If you will hold still, the doctors will take it out. Can you do that?"

She nodded again, and a gorilla on the opposite side of the bed from Maura promptly ripped out the tube, along with what felt like half a lung.

"Ooww! Fuck!" She glared at the gorilla, who glared right back, blood gleaming from a bite mark on the side of his hand. _Did I do that?_

"Language, Jane!" Her mother was beside Maura now, and if the doctor looked like hell, Angela Rizzoli looked like walking death.

"Gimme a break, Ma," she mumbled. "Got shot." The multiple adrenaline surges of the past few minutes were wearing off rapidly. The pain was reasserting itself, along with an exhaustion that made even talking feel like an insurmountable effort, but she had to try. "He's really okay?" She wasn't questioning Maura's honesty, not really. She just wanted to hear the words again, _needed_ to hear them.

"He's fine," Maura assured her. "He's in better shape than you are. They'll probably let him come up to see you in a day or two. Do you want some ice chips?"

"Beer." She wasn't overly surprised when a spoon was held to her mouth instead of a cold bottle of Sam Adams, but she slurped up the ice anyway, and God, it tasted good!

"That's all for now," Maura told her after two more spoonfuls. "Intravenous fluids are maintaining your hydration, and too much in your stomach too soon could trigger reflux or regurgitation."

"Puke," Jane translated for her mother, then glowered at the restraints on her wrists. "Off."

A guy in scrubs beside the bed didn't look eager. "She still has the IV line and the urinary catheter in place," he told Maura and Angela, "and if she becomes combative again -"

"She won't," Maura said quickly, before Jane could tell the asshole that she _would_ become combative if they didn't fucking untie her and stop talking about her like she wasn't there. "I'll stay with her and make sure she doesn't pull any lines out. You won't, will you?" This last was directed to Jane herself, and she nodded gratefully.

"Promise," she said. The doctor – or nurse, or whatever – didn't look any less doubtful, but he leaned down and removed the restraining straps first from one wrist, then the other – then emptied the contents of a syringe into the port on her IV.

"Nembutal," he informed her as he stepped away. "For the pain, and to help you sleep. And to spare the furniture," he added under his breath as he left, taking the broken rail of the bed with him.

"You need to sleep, baby," Angela said, taking up her hand. "You were hurt so bad, we didn't know if – if -" The tears were starting to flow again, and she'd never seen her mother look so _old_.

"Don't cry, Ma." She could feel the Nembutal starting to pull her down already, and while a part of her wanted to fight it, she couldn't honestly remember why, so she let her eyes drift shut, mumbling, "Don' cry. Frankie'll be all right. Maura said so."


	3. Coming Home

_Author's Note: I'm quite certain that I liked the flow of the first iteration of this chapter better. The rewrite was like passing a damned kidney stone, but it's done and now my OCD muse will let me get back to 'Sins of the Fathers'. Apologies for the delay! _

* * *

Jane's patience was gone well before her guests departed. Bad enough that her mother had turned her trip home from the hospital into a damn block party, with Frost and Korsak, Frankie and Maura and both her parents all coming along. Bad enough that Korsak and Frost damn near had to carry her up the stairs to her apartment (after she had adamantly refused to stay in her old room at her parents' house). No, then all her colleagues – her _friends_ – got to watch her mother fuss over her like a ten-year-old while her father claimed the most comfortable armchair, turned the TV to ESPN and ignored everything else, occasionally breaking his silence with a "Bring me a beer, Angela!".

Add to that a rapidly growing pressure in her bladder that she refused to surrender to, and she was ready to cheer – or scream - when first Vince and Barry, then Frankie, then – at long last – her parents made their goodbyes (with Angela making Maura swear that she would call if there were any problems) and left.

"Did you want to order – what are you doing?" Maura asked in surprise as she turned away from the door.

"Going to take a piss before I rupture," Jane growled, hauling herself from her spot on the couch, fingers digging into the padded arm as she tried to push upright. No way in hell had she been about to put on this floor show for her guests; another ten minutes and she'd just have done her business there and replaced the cushion. She straightened, gritting her teeth, shuffled one foot forward and felt the world start to tilt.

Maura was there before she fell, sliding an arm around her waist. "I don't need help," she muttered, willing it to be true, but when she tried to straighten up, a lance of pain through her side folded her over again. "Dammit!"

"Yes, you do." Maura's voice was calm, without a hint of pity, but Jane could still feel shame heating her cheeks as the doctor supported her, step by unsteady step, to the bathroom. Her legs were trembling and there was a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead by the time she made it, but she still swatted Maura's hands away when the doctor tried to tug her sweat pants down her legs.

"Jeez, Maur!"

"Jane, I'm a doctor. I have examined human anatomy in a clinical capacity on numerous occasions, and there is nothing -"

"And I am a thirty-seven year old woman who hasn't needed help in the john since she was two," Jane shot back, knowing she was being a bitch, unable to stop it. "I got this." She wanted to tell Maura that she didn't have to stay, didn't have to babysit her, but even she knew that wouldn't be possible for several more days yet, and if the options were Maura or her mother -

Maura nodded, but Jane could see the hurt in her eyes as she turned away. _It's not you,_ she wanted to say. Christ, she'd probably have pissed herself before she'd let anybody else help her even this much, but she didn't say anything, just waited until the doctor left, shutting the door behind her, before pushing her sweats down and literally dropping onto the toilet, bright spots dancing in her vision.

She stayed put well after she was done, staring at her hands, at the scar in the center of each palm. Unable to climb stairs, barely able to stand on her own, barely able to make it to the damn bathroom with assistance. She was as helpless now as she'd been then, pinned to a dirt floor by a pair of scalpels through her hands, head spinning from the blow from the two-by-four that had cold-cocked her when she'd gone rushing in alone. She'd been trying to save Catherine Cochrane, but if Korsak hadn't figured out where she'd gone, they would both have died at the hands of Charles Hoyt. They'd called her a hero then, just like they were doing now, and she didn't feel any more worthy of the title now than she did then. There had been a gamut of reporters when she'd left the hospital, shouting out inane questions, hoping to get a good sound bite for the evening news. She'd kept her mouth shut, let Frost and Korsak run interference, but she'd almost lost it at one query:

"_What do you think Charles Hoyt is thinking right now?"_

Her hands curled into fists at the memory. It had been a deliberate question, calculated to goad a response when everything else had failed. Vince had torn into the man like a pit bull on a pork chop, and it was a safe bet that nothing that he said would be deemed safe to broadcast at five. She had remained quiet, not because of any self-control, but because panic had stolen her voice, narrowed her windpipe to a pencil-thin line, and it was all she could do to draw one breath after another. Because Hoyt _was_ watching; she knew that without any doubt. Watching and seeing her like this, weak and helpless, dreaming about what he could do -

"Jane?" The knock on the door, as soft as it was, nearly jolted her out of her skin. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine!" she snapped, her heart hammering. "I'll be done in a minute, damn it!"

Silence, guilt swelling in its wake. Maura didn't deserve this, hadn't earned this hostility. She should just suck it up, hire a home health nurse, because she wasn't going to be fit company until she could take care of herself, and if someone was going to put up with her shit, they should at least get paid for it.

She pushed herself upright, dragged her sweats back up, then spent an indeterminate amount of time gripping the edge of the sink, trying to decide whether or not it would be easier to just spend the night sitting on the toilet rather than make the trek back to the couch. "All right," she said at last, hating how weak her voice sounded. The speed with which the door opened after she spoke made it clear that Maura had been waiting just outside, which only increased her frustration with her friend.

She gritted her teeth, made the trip back to the sofa in grim silence, then tensed at a knock on the door. Maura had probably given up and called her mother to come and take over this shitty detail, but Angela wouldn't have bothered with knocking.

"Got it," Maura announced – needlessly, since quite obviously Jane was in no condition to do it. Her pulse rate jumped up a notch or three when the doctor opened the door without even bothering to check at the peep hole, and her eyes instinctively sought out her gun...which was hanging in its holster from a hook behind the door, and might as well have been on the moon, as far as she was concerned.

"Damn it, Maur, I've told you that you need to check -" She broke off as the doctor closed the door and turned around with a very familiar looking box in her hands. "Is that Scarpelli's?"

"It might be," Maura replied, engaging the locks. "It _might_ even be a Whole Hog with extra cheese...but only if you will take your percoset without arguing."

Jane had opened her mouth to argue – this was blackmail of the lowest kind – when the smell hit her: yeasty bread and garlic and cheese and _meat_. She wasn't sure what had been on the trays that she'd been served in the hospital, but she was willing to bet that none of it had been animal-based protein.

She bit her lip, weighing the options. "One now and one later?" she asked hopefully. She didn't like the pain, but she liked the hazy, disconnected feeling of the painkillers even less. Her mind was currently the only part of her that worked the way it should, and she didn't like messing with it. To her relief, Maura nodded her assent. "And a beer?"

That was pushing it, so she wasn't surprised to be on the receiving end of an eyeroll and a pointed look. "Alcohol is a depressant, Jane, and combining it with the depressant effects of barbituate painkillers runs a very high risk of synergistic side effects such as respiratory depression -"

"Yeah, yeah." She couldn't say why it was less objectionable to impair herself with alcohol than with pills. It just was. "Gimme."

The pill came first, along with a glass of ice water, and Maura set the pizza box and a stack of napkins on the coffee table. "I'll just get some plates –" She paused as Jane dove under the lid, emerging with a wedge of perfectly baked crust piled high with pepperoni, Italian sausage, Canadian bacon, smoked sausage, pepper-crusted bacon and a ton of melted and browned mozzarella and slathered with a tangy, garlic-laden tomato sauce. "Or perhaps not."

"Don't bother," Jane groaned, whimpering around the first heavenly mouthful, barely feeling the burn on the spot behind her front teeth. God, she'd missed real food!

"All right." Maura settled on the other end of the sofa, arranging a few napkins carefully under her own slice and waiting for it to cool before taking a delicate bite, wrinkling her nose slightly before giving a little nod and taking a larger bite.

Jane watched her bemusedly. So far as she knew, this was the first time Maura had tried the Whole Hog. "Better than spinach and mushrooms?" she smirked.

"Nutritionally speaking, undoubtedly not," Maura replied, "but the taste is surprisingly good."

"That's what I've been telling you."

"I just hope the grease doesn't upset your digestion too much. Tell me if you experience any bloating or diarrhea."

Jane chewed, swallowed. There had been a time when comments like that had startled her. "You'll be the first to know."

And Maura still missed sarcasm more often than not. She smiled at Jane innocently. "Good. Vince said that he'll be happy to keep Jo Friday as long as you need him to. While it has been proven that individuals who interact with pets tend to heal more quickly from injuries or illness, and stay healthier overall, we thought it might be better to let you settle in for a few days first."

"And thank you so much for including me in the decision making process." Maura caught that bit of sarcasm; her face flushed and she dropped her eyes guiltily.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "We should have asked you about it, but with all the reporters outside, and – and I'm sorry. I can call Vince and have him bring her over if you -"

"No." She did miss Jo, but not having to worry about who would be walking and feeding her for a few days was probably a good thing, since she obviously wouldn't be up to it yet. And that wasn't the point, anyway. "You don't need to apologize, Maura. If anyone should be apologizing, it's me. You volunteered to be my caretaker, saving me from my mother, and all I can do is bitch, and I'm sorry about that. It's just that -" She broke off, unable to articulate the feeling of raw panic that rose in her when she realized that she couldn't walk, run, fight. That she was helpless.

"I know," Maura said when she faltered. "I know. But you'll get better. You'll heal. You're already so much better now than you were."

"I know." She did, but patience had never been one of her strong points; she wanted to be better _now_. "Thank you. For everything." For the patience that Jane lacked, for the faith that she'd never been able to understand. Maura thought of her as a hero, looked at her at times with something like awe, and finding out that badass Jane Rizzoli was terrified of scalpels hadn't changed that. The night she'd fallen asleep on the doctor's couch for the first time while discussing a case and woken up screaming and crying hadn't changed it either. Neither, apparently, had having to help badass Rizzoli to the bathroom before she pissed herself. She didn't get it. She damn sure didn't deserve it.

"You're welcome." Maura's smile was warm, and they finished eating in a silence that wasn't quite as awkward as it could have been. As much as Jane wanted to devour half the pizza in one sitting, three weeks of hospital food had shrunken her stomach, and after only two slices she felt stuffed. Plenty for breakfast, she consoled herself as Maura took the box to the kitchen and stuck it in the refrigerator. Cold, with milk.

"Did you want to watch a movie?" Maura asked as she returned. "Or find a game on TV?"

"A movie's fine," Jane replied. If Maura was going to put up with her being a piss-poor patient, the least she could do was not force her to watch sports. And none of her teams were playing tonight, anyway. "Got anything in mind?"

"I brought this." Maura dug into her purse and came out with a DVD case that she held out to Jane. "I've never seen it. Have you?"

Steel Magnolias. "No," Jane replied, eying the bevy of smiling women on the cover. She'd managed to avoid chick flicks for most of her life, but when it was Maura's turn to pick what they watched on movie nights, it was that, documentaries or foreign movies with subtitles and plots that made no sense whatsoever. Some were ridiculous, most weren't too bad, though she'd started putting her foot down on adaptations of anything by Nicholas Sparks. But this wasn't among those, and she owed Maura right now. "Sounds good," she said, handing it back with a smile.

Maura's eyes searched her face for a moment, as though unsure if she meant it, then the doctor's face broke into a pleased smile, and she bounced up to insert the disc into the player.

"Did you know this is based upon a true story?" she asked as she sat back down and Jane used the remote to turn on the TV and start the movie. "The man who wrote the play that it was based upon did so as a way to cope with his grief after his sister – the character that Julia Roberts plays - died from complications of diabetes. He even had her doctors and nurses play their own parts in the movie."

"She _dies_? Jeez, Maur, way to spoil it!" She almost felt bad at the suddenly stricken expression on Maura's face. "I'm kidding. I may not have seen it, but everybody in the western hemisphere knows the general plot by now."

As the opening credits started to play, she tried to get comfortable; she'd been upright by now for much longer than she had been over the previous three weeks. Her side was killing her, but she really didn't want to take that second percoset just yet.

Maura watched her struggle in silence for a bit. "Here," she said at last, catching Jane's hand and drawing her over until she was stretched out on her left side with her head resting on Maura's legs. "Better?"

"Yeah." She rolled her right shoulder, feeling the tension in the stitches along her abdomen, but the pain had subsided to an ignorable background level. "Just don't blame me if I fall asleep." She hated the admission, hated the ruin that her injury had made of her stamina. She'd been unconscious for the first three days and slept more often than not for the next three weeks in the hospital, but she still felt exhausted by the exertions of the short trip home and the even shorter trip to the bathroom.

"You need to rest," Maura replied quietly, her hand smoothing the hair away from Jane's face. It was a relaxing sensation, and Jane wouldn't have been surprised if she did fall asleep. Maura did that to her; she'd been musing once on how weird it was that two people as different as they were got along so well, and had been treated to a treatise from Maura on how sound waves of equal but opposite amplitude intersecting would cancel each other out, resulting in silence.

That was what she'd gotten out of it, anyway, and she found the description surprisingly apt; when she was with Maura, the noise of her life caused by all the things she was supposed to be: kickass cop, responsible oldest child, big sister...it all stilled somehow, and she was just...Jane. She'd tried early on to don the same masks that she wore with just about everybody else in her life. They weren't lies, not really...but they _felt_ like lies with Maura, and how could you lie to someone who couldn't lie back? Jane couldn't – not easily, anyway, and while it had made her feel exposed and awkward as hell at first, she had learned to treasure the silence, accepting the gift without trying to understand the 'why' behind it.

She accepted it now, and while she relaxed enough that sleep would have been possible, the movie actually proved to be fairly engaging. Julia Roberts' character was annoying as hell, but the banter between the older women sounded like just about every family gathering she could recall, with mothers, grandmothers and aunts gathered in the kitchen, instead of a beauty parlor.

"Are you crying?" Maura asked during the funeral scene.

"Hmm? Nah," Jane replied, sniffling a bit. "Sinuses."

"Of course," Maura said, passing her a tissue and keeping one for her own tears. It _was_ kinda sad, but funny, too...which was hard to pull off.

"I liked it," she admitted as the credits began to roll across the guy in a bunny suit on the back of a Harley.

"So did I," Maura said. "It was a fascinating study of interpersonal relationships in a largely matriarchal society, as presented from the perspective of a male onlooker."

"Male or female, he nailed it," Jane observed. "If you want to do some first hand study, just come to any Rizzoli family reunion. My Aunt Marie sounds just like Truvy, and my grandmother and her sister could have subbed in for Clairee and Oiuser." Was that really what women were named in the South?

"Really? That must be fun." Jane could hear the faintly wistful tone in Maura's reply and turned her head, looking up at her friend.

"It can be," she conceded, "until they start in on when am I gonna get married and give my Mom some grandbabies to spoil and how can I want to work in such a dangerous job." She rolled her eyes. She'd gotten an early dose in the steady parade of visitors while she'd been in the hospital, but Thanksgiving this year was going to be seven different flavors of Hell. Maybe she'd get lucky and be on call.

"It's just because they love you," Maura told her earnestly.

"I know," she replied. And she did. Really. And she loved them. Just...from a distance, please. "It just makes me crazy sometimes."

"It can't be easy to have so many people pinning their expectations on you," the doctor said. "My parents were both only children; my mother's parents had died before they adopted me, and my father was never close to his parents. They had friends, of course, colleagues who would visit for dinner parties...but it was never like that." She nodded in the direction of the television.

"No?" Jane quirked an eyebrow at her. "No crazy dogs and husbands shooting guns and condoms on cars?"

"God, no!" Maura laughed a bit. "They talked about art and politics and wines. I used to hide at the top of the stairs after I was supposed to be in bed and listen to them. They seemed so...grown up, cultured. I wanted to be like them." She cocked her head, a faintly quizzical expression touching her face. "I'm not sure why now."

Jane chuckled. "Frankie and I used to do the same thing, listening to Ma and Pop playing cards with the neighbors Friday nights, but it was football, politics and beer. And probably a lot more swearing."

"Probably," Maura agreed with a faint smile, then, "What was it like, growing up with siblings?"

"A pain in the ass," Jane replied promptly, then qualified it. "Maybe not completely. They were cute when they were little, I guess, but then they got obnoxious. When I was in middle school, I used to ask God every night to make me an only child."

"And yet, you were willing to sacrifice your own life to save Frankie," Maura observed quietly.

"Well, yeah," Jane replied with a shrug, trying for no big deal. She still felt a bit stupid, finding out that the SWAT team had burst into the morgue almost before Bobby had dragged her out. There had been no need for her to do what she had done, but she hadn't known it then, and she still felt an unpleasant tightness in her chest at the memory of Frankie laying on one of the autopsy tables, face pale, lips tinged with blood, scared eyes turned to his big sister for reassurance. How fucking terrified she'd been at the thought of losing him.

"That's what family does," she said, pushing herself up into a sitting position, swallowing against the tightness that was trying to migrate from her chest to her throat. She didn't know how to talk about the kid with big brown eyes and tousled hair who had followed her everywhere from his first steps, wanting to do whatever she did. About summers of pickup basketball and winters of hockey. About watching him graduate from the Academy with a mix of pride and fear that was so potent that she almost couldn't breathe. About holding him while he'd cried after shooting Hoyt's last apprentice, who had used Frankie to get to Jane. About waking up in her hospital bed to find him hunched in a chair, his own IV line running to a bag on a pole beside him, watching over her. They hadn't talked about it then any more than they ever had, but he'd stayed there, holding her hand, the two of them watching the Red Sox beating the Orioles until the nurse from his ward dragged him out. He'd needed a transfusion and surgery to repair his torn lung and liver, but he'd still beat her out of the hospital by two weeks (evidently a 40 caliber bullet through the bowel was a good way to ensure an extended hospital stay) and been back to visit her every day.

She shrugged again awkwardly. How did you explain something that just _was_? "That's family," she repeated. The only explanation she had.

"Some families," Maura replied, dropping her eyes. Jane knew enough not to need to ask what she meant, though she still couldn't figure out why the Isles had bothered to adopt a child, only to dump her off in boarding school, ignoring her to the point that she could actually doubt that they would give their lives for her. Not an issue that Jane ever had with her own mother; Angela had proclaimed her willingness for martyrdom on numerous occasions, but more than that, Jane _knew_ it, in a visceral spot that needed no words.

"Did you ever read _Little Women_?"

The question brought Jane out of her thoughts, and she looked at her friend in surprise. "Sure. Who hasn't?" Actually, she hadn't expected that Maura had read something so normal; even as a kid, she could only picture her with something like an anatomy text or _Origin Of The Species_ or something brainy.

"I wanted to know what it was like." Maura looked embarrassed at the admission. "My parents didn't want to adopt any more children, but I'd always wanted a sister."

"So did I," Jane told her with a grimace. Her little brothers had been noisy, smelly and obnoxious to her adolescent self. She'd wanted a quiet, adoring little sister: a Beth to protect and love, who wouldn't put snakes in her bed or tattle when she sneaked downstairs after bedtime to steal cookies. The fact that Beth had died in the book had suggested a possible weakness in the plan – not that her parents had been overly receptive to her suggestion of trading at least one of their sons in – and when she had discovered that Louisa May Alcott's real sister Elizabeth had also died, she'd decided that brothers, while noisier and smellier, were also sturdier. "So, which one were you?" She'd been Jo, no question.

Maura looked surprised, then uncomfortable. "I...never really was able to identify with any of the archetypal personalities portrayed by the main characters."

Jane blinked. _Everybody_ identified with one of the March sisters; it was one of the unspoken rules of reading the book, and the notion that Maura couldn't determine where she might fit suggested strongly just how alienated she'd been as a child.

"Amy," Jane said after a moment's thought. "Definitely Amy. Amy was cultured, intelligent." Amy didn't freaking die.

Maura looked uncertain. "Amy was a brat. Jo hated her."

"She didn't hate her," Jane protested. "They fought when they were kids, but when they grew up, they were close. That's just the way it is. Brothers, sisters...doesn't matter, I guess." She and Frankie still argued, but was more for the fun of exasperating their mother than anything else. Tommy...well, that was a different matter, wasn't it? But he was still her baby brother, even if she didn't have any idea how to love him without kicking his screwup ass back into line for the millionth time.

"I wouldn't know," Maura said with a shrug and a sad little smile. "I never had either."

"You've got me." The offer sounded corny as hell to her own ears, and Jane glanced away as she spoke, the long silence after her words confirming that it had been a stupid idea. She and Beth Capellino had done the whole 'blood sisters' thing (except Beth had drawn the line at actually drawing blood the way the movies showed it, so it probably hadn't counted anyway) when they'd been ten, but grown women didn't -

"I almost didn't." Maura's voice was barely audible, and when Jane looked back at her, she saw tears running down her friend's face.

"What?" She stared at the doctor in astonishment. "No, I'm fine! You said so yourself, right? See?" She sat up straighter, gritting her teeth as her body protested the motion. "Good as new in no time."

"You...you almost weren't." Anguished hazel eyes met hers, Maura's usual calm crumbling away. "Jane, I saw it happen! I saw you shoot yourself!"

"Oh..." _Aw, crap_. She'd known that Frost and Korsak had seen it, along with most of the rest of BPD who'd been on the street outside headquarters that day, but she hadn't realized that Maura had made it outside in time to witness the shooting. "Maura, I -"

"I've seen the results of violence," the doctor went on. "For years, sometimes daily, I've seen gunshot victims, but I never saw anyone _get_ shot before...and it was _you_, Jane! I saw the bullet go through you, and I knew from the trajectory everything it was destroying: your liver, your large intestine, your lung. Possibly even your aorta, your descending vena cava, because there was so much blood! I was trying to help you, trying to get the blood to stop, and it wouldn't!" She stared down at her hands, rubbing them together as though she was still trying to wipe it away. "There was so much blood, and I couldn't get it to stop because I wasn't good enough!"

"What?" That one had come out of left field, and for a moment, all Jane could do was stare at her friend in astonishment. "No! Maur, no! I shot myself; you can't fix that with a band-aid!" She caught Maura's hands in her own, but the other woman pulled away, rubbing her hands over her face, the tears falling faster now.

"I'm a doctor, Jane! I should have been able to manage more than a band-aid, but I couldn't, and you kept bleeding, and then you _died_! You stopped breathing, your heart stopped beating and I _felt_ you die! If the paramedics hadn't been right there with volume expanders and the defibrillator...and it happened again in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, and I couldn't do anything but watch! You're the best friend I've ever had and I saw you shoot yourself and I felt you die!" Her eyes flashed with sudden anger. "How could you _do_ that, Jane? To your parents, your friends, to me..." One perfectly manicured hand curled into a fist, and for a moment, Jane thought Maura was going to throw a punch at her, which would actually have been a bit of a relief. Anger she could deal with, but the fist loosened and Maura buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

_Holy crap._ Jane had known about the two resuscitations; they were in her medical record, and of course, her mother had made mention of them often enough. She was used to her mother's histrionics, probably even a bit jaded, so it had been easy enough to shrug it off. She was alive, wasn't she? She'd never seen Maura like this, though. Angela had praised the doctor for her support, for how calm and helpful she'd been. Korsak and Frost had confirmed it; throughout those first crazy days, Maura had been there: consoling Frank and Angela, making sure they ate and rested, translating medical jargon, communicating with physicians, running errands. Being strong for them, holding back her own emotions the way she had always done, because no one had ever been there for her.

"Maur." She edged forward, sliding her arms around Maura and drawing her forward. She needed to fix this, needed to make it right, but she wasn't sure how. "Let it out," she murmured. "Just let it out, Maur. It's all right. I'm here." Maura's arms wrapped around her, holding on with surprising strength, and she bit down hard on her tongue at the protest from her incision. That wasn't important right now. She held her while she cried, rocking and making soothing noises, trying to find the words to say.

"You're my best friend, too, Maura," she said softly as the tears began to taper off. "You're family. Ma's ready to adopt you for saving Frankie."

"It wasn't enough." Maura shook her head, her face still pressed into Jane's shoulder, her voice muffled. "If I'd done more, stabilized him, you wouldn't have thought you needed to...needed to..."

"No." Jane caught Maura's shoulders, pushing her to arm's length, eye to eye, willing her to listen, to believe. "Maura, Frankie is alive because of what you did. You were good enough. You _are_ good enough, you understand? After Hoyt, you helped me get back, you saved me. You're the best friend I've ever had, and if you need a crazy family, you can share mine, because I'm not going anywhere. Thirty years from now, we'll still be best friends, like Clairee and Ouiser, just...without the weird names, all right?"

A tiny smile through the tears. "Which one of us is Oiuser?"

Jane had to laugh. "You have to ask?" She tried to straighten up, winced, her hand dropping involuntarily to her side.

"Your incision! God, Jane, I'm sorry!" Maura looked stricken, but Jane waved her off, leaning back gingerly on the couch.

"I'm fine, I promise. Just...might be almost time for that second percoset, that's all." She cocked her head, studying her friend. "Are you all right?"

"Of course." Maura looked embarrassed, wiping her eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't usually do that."

"You don't have to apologize," Jane said gruffly. "You need to be able to do that sometimes. You...feel better?"

"Yes," Maura replied. "Thank you."

"That's what family does," Jane replied simply, looking down, her fingers toying with the edge of the sofa cushion. "Look, I'm sorry if I scared you when I..." She trailed off, shrugged. "You know. But if I had the same choice, knowing only what I knew then...I'd do it again."

"I know." Maura's reply was gentle, her hand reaching out to cover Jane's. "It's part of who you are. I'm just glad you're all right. I'll get your percoset."

Jane nodded. Much as she hated it, she knew she would need the painkiller to sleep.

"Ready for bed?" Maura asked as she washed down the pill with the last of her water.

"Yeah," Jane replied. "Can I get my gun?"

The doctor looked dubious. "Jane, I'm not certain that it's advisable for you to be handling firearms when you're under the influence of narcotic painkillers."

"You can keep it on your side," Jane conceded, knowing that she was probably right. "I'd just rather not have it hanging by the front door as an invitation for a burglar to turn a B&E into a double homicide." She hadn't slept without the gun at her bedside since Hoyt, and as long as the bastard was alive and able to pull wacko apprentices out of the woodwork, she never would. "You remember how I told you to shoot it?" If Maura could get to it before Jane, even on the other side of the bed, then she really didn't need to be handling it.

Maura nodded, looking pleased with herself as she went to retrieve the gun, clipping the holster to the waist of her pants before returning to help Jane get to the bedroom.

"Not even gonna try it," Jane muttered as Maura turned to the dresser where she kept her t-shirts and shorts for sleeping in. "This'll work just fine." She sat on the edge of the bed, squirming out of the sweat pants and leaving them in a heap on the floor, then slid between the sheets and closing her eyes with a sigh of relief. No more hospital beds, no more nurses waking her to see if she needed a sleeping pill, no more bedpans...

Bedpans.

_Shit. _Her eyes opened. "Maur?"

_Gonna be a long damn recovery._


End file.
